HP was not Palm's only suitor when the Prē and Pixi punter offered itself for sale — Apple, Google, and RIM were also seeking the hand of the smartphone maker, presumably attracted by its webOS dowry and its patent portfolio. Nokia wasn't.
This tidbit comes from the Business Insider, citing "a source familiar with the …

You would think...

But owning WebOS would've put HTC in direct competition with most if not all of their customers, which isnt a smart thing to do considering the overall health of palm and the volatility of the mobile handset market.

Plus i really dont think HTC has the kind of pocket change under the couch coushins it would've needed to buy palm.

No no no no

No Nokia

Nokia was wise to stay out. They have S40, S60 (3rd and 5th) and MeeGo. S40 will probably be replaced by Symbian^3 and Symbian^4 and MeeGo will replace the S60 phones. Why would they need yet another UI/OS? They own Symbian, they pretty much own MeeGo as it appears that Nokia is doing most of the work for MeeGo. They do sell netbooks and that could be why they partnered with Intel with Meego (Maemo/Moblin) and maybe a deal on Atom processors. Symbian^4 and MeeGo will use Qt and that is where they want to be on their road map.

The HP acquisition of Palm might allow them to do something they have never been able to do before, be truly Mac compatible. Their software for the Mac is horrible and in many cases, doesn't work. One thing is for sure, Palm has shown how Mac compatible they can be.

But what about...

Just one thing stops me buying a Palm phone

There aren't any sat nav apps available for it like Tom Tom, Co Pilot etc. The phone is capable of running such an app, but nobody has got round to writing one yet as far as I'm aware. You can use Google Maps, but that only works where there is a phone signal, and if you are driving along country roads, you will get dropped connections from time to time.

More than phones and tablets

Keep in mind that massive parts of HP's business lie in things like printing and medical equipment. There's probably no reason why we won't see a whole new generation of gear based around webOS. In a few years we might see hospital heart monitors and the like running webOS!